[May 2012]

Story Title: My Bodyguards
Story Author: eunhyuklover99

Title: 2/5
In all honesty, the title wasn’t all that bad. Sure, it was a little plain, but it fit the story for the most part (I’ll explain what I mean by this in a few lines). However, I think that you could’ve been a tad bit more creative with this. Imagine this: you’re scrolling among the thousands of fanfics out there, and you see a story called “My Bodyguards.” Would you actually be interested enough to click on it based solely on the title?  The idea of bodyguards itself is a pretty common theme that I see on this site, and just titling your story something so generic doesn’t make it stand out from the other stories either.

While we’re on the topic of bodyguards, I have another question to ask you: Why does Eunhan even need bodyguards? When you think of someone that has bodyguards, you think of high-ranking government officials, or famous celebrities, or even just rich businessmen. And Eunhan is none of the above. It’s mentioned briefly that her father is a businessman, but other than that, we’re not given much insight into the situation. If she needs bodyguards, it usually means that whoever hired them (in this case, her father), feels as though she’s in some sort of mortal danger. Yet when you explain Eunhan’s father’s reasoning in hiring these guards for her in the first place, it’s simply because he wants her to open up to them? I found this a little strange and unrealistic. Then again, your story is only on chapter five, so perhaps you’ll throw in some action scenes where the boys are actually protecting (as in protecting her from severe injury and death, like you would expect from a bodyguard. Not protecting her from emotionally hurting herself) her later on?
 

Appearance: 9/10
Kudos to your graphic designer! Your graphics are some of the best that I’ve seen on the site, which is definitely good! I also liked that you changed the color of your text from a boring black to a nice shade of pink that matched with your artwork. It wasn’t too bright to be annoying or too late that it was too hard to read. It was perfect. :)

However, I felt like I had to deduct a point due to the improper grammar found in your poster. Bad grammar in itself is a total turn-off, and because your poster had bad grammar, I felt like it wasn’t as appealing as it could’ve been. Your poster reads:

“I don’t need people following me around and protect me! I’m already 16! I can protect myself!”
“We will protect you no matter what! Even if it risk our life!”

But it should read:

“I don’t need people following me around to protect me! I’m already sixteen! I can protect myself!”
“We will protect you no matter what! Even if we have to risk our lives!”
 

Description/Foreword: 6/10
Well first off, I thought that what you included in your description was a bit strange. I don’t mean the whole thing, buy when part in particular bothered me considerably:

“Ah! What am I saying thinking?! They’re not handsome! Not at all!”

I don’t really understand what the point of including the word “saying” was and why you had to cross it out. Why couldn’t you just throw out the word entirely and just use “thinking?” I know that you’re going for a light sort of feel in your story (or at least, that’s what I assume from the adorable nature of your graphics), so perhaps this was to sort of give it a more teenager-ish vibe? I don’t know. I still think it was a bit weird. 

Another thing that bothered me was the pictures that you decided to use for your character profiles. The one that you used for Eunhan was fine, but I feel that you could’ve picked better pictures for Daehyun and Himchan, or at least have had some commissioned. Since Himchan and Daehyun are both the main character’s love interests, it would make sense to have them portrayed as equal until we start reading the story and begin to judge them ourselves. By this, I mean that you should’ve tried to pick pictures of the two that were at least roughly the same size and picture type. For Daehyun, you used a collage, and for Himchan, you used a picture of him that has a watermark of some sort on it that I found a bit distracting. I understand that it might be a bit difficult at times to find suitable pictures, so I recommend just having Character Profiles commissioned. Everything will match better, and you won’t have to worry about providing your own pictures.

In all actuality though, I don’t even think you need the Character Profiles. You already have a Character Chart for your story, which I think would suffice on its own. I actually think that the Character Profiles aren’t that good of an idea, as you ended up spoiling a good amount of the story. It would’ve been more interesting for the B.A.P boys to discover why Eunhan was so coldhearted throughout the storyline instead of you just telling us about it straight from the beginning. Not only did it eliminate potential suspense in your story, but it also put a sort of damper on its mood as well. I would’ve preferred to make personal assumptions about each of the characters myself instead of you just telling me all about them.

I also found your descriptions for Daehyun, Himchan, and the B.A.P boys to be a little repetitive and bland. Okay, I get it. They’re Eunhan’s bodyguards, and they’re obviously not going to let anyone hurt their charge. I can tell that you tried to word it differently in the three different times that you stated it, but it was still much too similar.

Rather than including character descriptions, I would’ve added a preview of some sort to tease readers in what was to come in your story. Remember, your description/foreword is sort of the hook to your story: It has to interest readers enough to make them subscribe and keep coming back for more. I understand that you have a significant amount of subscribers, but I feel like you could get even more this way. It’s just a suggestion, of course.
 

Storyline: 12/25
I think that my main question about the entire story is this one: Why does Eunhan even need bodyguards? I never really caught it. I know I touched on this earlier, so I won’t really talk about it again. But it’s definitely one of the things that bothered me the most, and I hope that you take the time to explain it later on in your story.

I found a number of plot holes in your story as well. Would bodyguards really leave their charges alone just because the person they’re protecting didn’t want to see people? Not only is it irresponsible, but doing that means that they aren’t even doing their job. A bodyguard’s job is to keep their charge safe no matter what. And they can’t do that if they decide it’s a good idea to leave her alone. Another thing that I realized is that you have a motorcycle pop out of nowhere. The one that Eunhan and Daehyun ride? They surely didn’t take it to school themselves as I imagine that all the B.A.P boys traveled together and didn’t import their own motorcycles for the job (but this could somehow be a possibility I guess, since you didn’t really tell us how they got to school in the first place).

The bad thing about plot holes is that they usually take the suspense away from a story. And that’s exactly what they did here.

I think the biggest thing that bothered me about your storyline was that the whole Eunhyuk tragedy was brought up way too early in the story. I mean, Chapter Four? Really? You should’ve tried to leave the readers guessing about what it was that made Eunhan seem so cold and heartless. But you go ahead and have her talk about it (though I imagine it to be a highly sensitive topic) to a man that’s practically a stranger and whom she had only met the night before? It moved way too fast. And I feel that since you told us about it so early in the story, it also made the whole thing feel kinda cliché which is definitely a bad thing since the whole concept of your story isn’t that original in the first place.
 

Grammar: 18/25
Your punctuation is a little off in some areas, mostly in the description/foreword. You had a couple of other mistakes in the grammar sense, but they were minor and didn’t stand out that much. However, in your description/foreword and first chapter, these mistakes stood our significantly. It’s not our shoppe’s policy to go through and correct every single one of your mistakes for you (because then stories would take even longer to review), but I’m sure that if you read over your earlier chapters, you would be able to notice them a lot easier. Because your first chapter and your description/foreword are the first things that your readers will read, you should try to make them amazing. There are some readers that are just put off by bad grammar, and they might not read your story because of it (I’m not going to lie, but I’m one of these people; I’m very picky about grammar).

One area of grammar that you were seemed to be having trouble with in particular was that you kept changing your tenses (past-tense, present-tense, etc.).  In case you’re still not sure what I’m referring to (I think I’m explaining it weirdly), here is an example, taken from the first chapter of your story.

“Eunhan grabbed her phone and look at the screen.”

“Grabbed” is a past-tense verb, while “look” is a present-tense verb. I wasn’t sure what tense you were trying to tell your story in, so you might want to look into that. It can get a bit confusing for the reader. 

The good news is that I felt that you definitely improved grammar-wise as the story continued. Albeit it’s not the best grammar, by the fifth chapter it didn’t bother me as much. Which is a good thing.
 

Characterization: 5/15
I have to say that your characterization kinda irked me here. The way you wrote about the characters made them seem sort of unrealistic to me, which is something that you never want people to feel in a story. As a writer, it’s your job to try to make readers view your characters as realistically as possible. I think that your biggest personality is that your characters don’t have a set personality and seem to drift between multiple ones. I mean, I guess that some people are like that, but definitely not all people. 

To make this easier, I’ve split this part of your review into four sections: One to talk about Eunhan, one to talk about Himchan, one to talk about Daehyun, and one to talk about all of the other characters that aren’t really main ones. LOL.

I think that what bothered me the most about Eunhan is that her personality seemed to change so quickly. Since the story flow felt very fast, for me it felt like chapter five was way too early for Eunhan’s icy demeanor to be broken. She seems like she’s supposed to be cold and heartless. I thought that it was supposed to be her personality in the story, ever since the whole Eunhyuk thing happened (which I also have to talk about, by the way). But story-wise, this is like… Eunhan’s first actual day with her bodyguards when she goes with Daehyun to Lotte World, right? As in, she met them the night before, and she already feels comfortable sneaking out of school with him to go to an amusement park where she is portrayed as bright and happy and excitable? Wut?  I think that’s definitely moving too fast. As I mentioned before, her feelings about the whole Eunhyuk thing bothered me, too. Not only was it brought in too early, but I feel like Eunhan got over it way too quickly as well. So she’s been mourning his death for a year or so, and after about a day, she’s starting to get over him and have feelings for her new bodyguards? I think that that’s more than a little unbelievable. You should’ve tried to have her gradually open up more and more instead of just randomly making her open up to them. Not only is it an example of your bad story flow, but it also messed with Eunhan’s character.

I thought you hit Himchan pretty spot on, but there was one thing that bothered me a lot. And that was the fact that it seemed like he started developing feelings for Eunhan after one night. I mean, really? I get that she did something nice for him, but that’s just… More than a little unrealistic.

Daehyun bothered me as well. His personality is described as being “shy but tough,” yet when he’s introduced, he doesn’t seem like that at all. In fact, he seems kinda happy-go-lucky. And then when they go to Lotte World, he suddenly becomes a little lame in the adventure-sense. I think that another thing that bothered me was his whole mask thing in Chapter Two. I mean, why did he even need to wear a mask? Just for a fashion statement? It seemed really random and out of place.

The final thing that kinda irked me about your more minor characters: What was really the importance of Tiffany, Jiyong, and the rest of Eunhan’s friends? Do they have any purpose other than being Eunhan’s friends? You went so far as to say that though you gave them the names, they weren’t actually the idols who have the same names (Tiffany from SNSD and Jiyong from BIGBANG). My big question is: Why did you have to give these OCs such common names? There are so many other names in the name bank that you could’ve picked from, but picking the names of such popular idols really throws people off. I think that you yourself also caught wind of that since you through in an author’s note in the middle of your chapter to explain that they weren’t the idols we were thinking of. If you’re going to have OCs, you should at least try to make them original instead of characters that suspiciously remind us of other characters, you know what I mean?

And if Tiffany and Jiyong don’t really even have a role in the story other than being Eunhan’s friends, then you probably could’ve just referred to them as such without naming them. Sometimes throwing in too much names in a story confuses people. Scratch that. Most of the timethrowing in too many names in a story confuses people.
 

Writing Style: 2/5
To put it bluntly, your writing style isn’t very descriptive at all. Because you left out so much descriptions, the flow of the story came off as awkward and it moved too quickly. An example of this was in Chapter 2, when you talk about Himchan and Eunhan getting into trouble for talking. It made it seem like they got into trouble, but didn’t even put up much of an argument, which is pretty unrealistic for people their age. I also found the scene where Hyomin hit Eunhan with a volleyball to be worded awkwardly as well. Though this ties in with characterization, I’ll also say it here: Would someone really do something like that just because they weren’t picked for a group? I understand that you have some sort of underlying purpose for her actions, but even so, would being left out of a group really be the final straw for someone to lash out? It seemed a bit iffy to me…

I also think that it might be a better idea to use less Korean terms. Yes, I understand that the story takes place in Korea, but you’re telling the story to us in English. Perhaps common Korean terms (annyeong; saranghae, yeboseyo, etc.) would be all right, but if you have to explain the terminology to your readers using parentheses in the middle of your story, then I think that it’s a bit too much.

Just remember: Don’t just tell the readers! Show us! Instead of just zooming through the storyline, try to elaborate more on the things that are happening in each chapter.
 

Overall Enjoyment: 3/5
Ohmygawd, writing that review made me feel like a buttface. . However, please know that this is just constructive criticism to make you a better writer! Trust me: your writing is a lot better than some of the other pieces that I’ve had to review.

Keep writing! Like I said before, it was clear as I advanced through your story that you were improving, so just imagine how much better you can get when you keep working on it! ;D
 

Reviewer’s Comments and Advice:
I think that the biggest advice that I can give to you is to add more details and descriptions to your work. Your story flow was really awkward and moved way too fast for my liking, but I feel that just elaborating on everything that’s going on might be able to fix that. It would probably also help you if you mapped out your chapters since their lengths varied a lot throughout your story.

Other than that, I think you’ll be fine. :) I would say that you should look into a proofreader or betareader, but I said some other time in the review, your grammar definitely improved as the story progressed. You have the makings to be a good writer, so you should take the opportunity!  Don’t give up! 

I apologize in advance if I seem to be all over the place in this review.  I wrote this in fragments, and I really wanted to get this to you soon, so that’s why you might see this as awkwardly written. Thank you again for requesting at our shoppe! I’m so sorry that it took me so long to finish your request though. ;___; I’d love to read some of your future work sometime! ;D
 

Score Calculations:Title. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .+2
                                    Appearance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .+9
                                    Description/Foreword. . . . . . .+6
                                    Storyline. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .+12
                                    Grammar. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .+18
                                    Characterization. . . . . . . . . . . .+5
                                    Writing Style. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . +2
                                    Overall Enjoyment. . . . . . . . . . +3

                                                              Total Score=57

Letter Grade:  Unmarked